Ilya Ilych Oblomov in “Mid-Morning of the Living Dead”

In Ilya Ilych Oblomov in “Mid-Morning of the Living Dead” the player takes control of the title character, a lackadaisical 19th-century Russian nobleman, and guides him through a hellish day in St. Petersburg. The dead have returned to walk the earth and feast upon the flesh of the living, and it is up to Oblomov to get on as best he can.

The game is divided into three acts, two of which take place in Oblomov’s dusty, disordered bedroom. After waking at eight o’clock, he has tea, argues with his manservant, Zakhar, and speaks to a succession of traumatised visitors, all of whom urge him to flee while he still can. However, he is determined not to act rashly, but to give the situation due consideration, which he does while drinking more tea in bed.

In the second act, Zakhar’s failure to return from a minor errand forces Oblomov to rise and confront the hordes of flesh-eating abominations that now surround his home. After bathing in lukewarm water for half an hour, dressing and taking a little lunch, he is finally ready to exit his apartment, thereby marking the beginning of the third act.

The conclusion of Ilya Ilych Oblomov in “Mid-Morning of the Living Dead” takes place on the streets of St. Petersburg during the early evening. The city is now totally overrun by zombies, and Oblomov must walk rather more quickly than he would prefer in order to evade their dread embrace. Disaster strikes when he sits down on a public bench to rest: he briefly nods off, initiating an action-packed finale in which the player must wrestle to awaken his charge before he is torn apart and devoured.

Sadly, this task proves impossible, and the game ends with a prolonged sequence of graphic dismemberment, followed by a screen saying “You Have Won” and a credit roll.

Ilya Ilych Oblomov in “Mid-Morning of the Living Dead” is a next-generation point-and-click adventure, partially based on the classic novel Oblomov by Ivan Goncharov. It is distinguished from its antiquated peers by virtue of the groundbreaking InDifrenz™ interface, which avoids the gameplay limitations associated with the genre by preventing the player from interacting with the environment in any way.

Twilight of the Idle

So I’m feeling pretty inspired by this game I’ve come across that’s named after a Nietzsche book: Beyond Good and Evil. The synopsis says that it’s about a reporter on an alien planet who “discovers…a horrific government conspiracy and is forced to battle an evil she cannot possibly fathom [presumably because it’s so, like, beyond],” which leaves me wondering where old Friedrich comes into it…maybe he’s an NPC. It was conceived by a man with a French-sounding name.

Anyway, now I’m thinking about philosophical works with titles that have good crossover potential: Being and Time, Dreams of a Spirit Seer, No Exit, Death and the Labyrinth… Then again, why stray any further than other Nietzsche texts: Twilight of the Idols, The Birth of Tragedy, Human, All Too Human (actually, someone’s already nicked that one for a game where cybernetically-enhanced Norse gods fight each other with laser cannons). Or how about The Gay Science. I would love to make a The Gay Science game. Hot damn.


The Gay Science
Game Proposal

The Gay Science is a first-person, isometric, top-down action-strategy-shooter in which the player must lead a team of cartoon soldier ants across the naked body of a sleeping male prostitute in a simulation of Nazi-occupied Paris being generated by a supercomputer on board a zombie-infested Ancient Greek space station in the year 11358. The objective is to obtain as much of the honey that is being poured on the sleeping male prostitute’s body by his time-travelling, sex-tourist robot companion as possible before glitches, caused by zombie-inflicted damage to the Ancient Greek mainframe, which was designed by wise albino sharks, desynchronise the simulation and return the player to the antiquated future, where it (the honey) may be traded for zombie-repelling weaponry and Xbox LIVE™ credit.

The Gay Science makes use of the revolutionary MONK™ peripheral for the Nintendo Wii, which consists of a touch-sensitive tablet, quill, lectern and uncomfortable wooden chair (with optional “Broken” upgrade). This is an exclusive feature of The Gay Science, and the game may not be operated by any other means. The player controls the on-screen action by using the quill to write haiku instructions on the tablet in a mixture of Sanskrit and Gregg shorthand. If the player fails to complete any instructions in the time allotted his warranty will become invalid.

Spoonfed Interview

I recently did an interview with the librettist and (3/4) composers of a new oratorio called 25 Brook Street, written to commemorate 250 years since the death of G.F. Handel. It's available to view HERE.

If anyone wants to give me a lot of arts-journalist-type work (preferably paid) on the basis of this, they should feel 100% free to do so.

Xcellence.

Doctor Atomic - The English National Opera at the Coliseum, Monday 16 March 2009

I’m no aficionado of opera houses, but as far as unlikely venues for an A-bomb go, the Coliseum has to top the list. Its décor is heavily baroque: arches and columns are liberally distributed, and cornicing climbs among them like a particularly virulent creeper (to say nothing of the vertiginous lions and angels peering down from the ceiling); it’s almost too old-fashioned-looking to be real—a modern pastiche of 18th-century affectation. And yet there’s a certain visual correlation with the foreboding orb that hangs over the stage for part of the evening, its burnished carapace moodily lit and strewn with cables that look aesthetic as much as functional. It almost makes you wonder why no-one thought of putting a bomb into an opera before.

Jokes about Boulez aside,* there’s definitely a Wagnerian quality to the prospect of nuclear annihilation, and in the absence of the man himself, who better than John Adams to step into the breach? Despite having written only two other capital-O operas (i.e. disregarding certain “opera-musicals” and “opera-oratorios”), Adams has established himself as the modern-day king of grandiose, emotive music-drama. What’s more, he’s a keen exponent of using the genre to examine contemporary—and often highly contentious—stories and issues, from international diplomacy to terrorism. His last opera, The Death of Klinghoffer, caused a minor scandal when it debuted in America, and has only been performed live once in the last 17 years.

Doctor Atomic, which depicts the final stages in the development of the atom bomb, is a far less controversial work than its predecessor. Adams and his librettist, Peter Sellars, focus on exploring the anguish and self-doubt experienced by those involved in the project, chiefly Dr. Oppenheimer himself. There’s nothing very illuminating in this—I don’t suppose anyone thinks that the development of a WMD is undertaken lightly—but there are moments of tremendous a/effectiveness, notably Oppenheimer’s aria “Batter My Heart”, which closes the first act. Unfortunately, much of the opera consists of interminable ensemble scenes, wherein various characters squabble about their misgivings. Not only does this slow the action to a crawl, it also precludes the in-depth exploration of the individuals depicted, so that the proceedings too often resemble a mere historical re-enactment (without even being particularly accurate).

Adam’s music is similarly undistinguished for much of the duration. While it’s every bit as brisk as expected, it fails to enliven the events on stage, and seldom rises to the emotive heights achieved in his previous operas. Besides the aforementioned aria, only a couple of sequences stand out, one being the tense but surprisingly low-key finale, which actually employs a lot of un-composed recorded sounds.

Overall, the strength of the performances and staging help to ensure that Doctor Atomic is intermittently enjoyable, but nothing can fully compensate for the libretto, whose formal shortcomings and occasional lapses into agonisingly bad pseudo-poetry (“…my eyes splitting the skull to tickle your brain with love…”) render too many sequences either tedious or embarrassing or both.

*Optional "writerly" opening paragraph + sentence fragment.

Watchmen

When Alan Moore’s Watchmen was released in 1986/7, it became the flagship for a new generation of comic books, and helped to demonstrate that super-hero stories didn’t have to be pulp—they could tackle serious themes in a serious style that was all their own. Unfortunately, despite the comic’s ambition and intelligence, the one quality its descendants have consistently and convincingly expanded upon is its depiction of brutal violence.

Today, with super-hero movies seemingly undergoing a renaissance of their own, Watchmen is primed to take centre stage once more, this time in the form of a two-hour Hollywood blockbuster with a nine-digit budget, helmed by the “visionary director of 300”, Zack Snyder. And what does Snyder bring to the project? You guessed it: violence in abundance.

Beginning with the murder of the Comedian, a retired “masked hero” turned government agent, the film charges through its various dissociated scenes at a pretty frantic rate, pausing only to indulge in spectacular fight sequences (mostly conducted in slow-motion) and feats of CGI. The Comedian’s former colleagues begin to examine their own lives, eventually reassembling and uncovering a murderous conspiracy of global proportions, but the plot never really coheres, and the supposed climax feels abrupt and emotionally unsatisfying.

Slavish attention has been paid to recreating the visuals of the comic, even to the extent of using parts of it to storyboard, and very little has been significantly changed. The real problem is the wealth of detail that has been omitted, and more particularly Snyder’s inability to effectively compensate for it. The result is a film that looks good (lots of primary colours, in contrast to a certain dark-hued rival) and delivers plenty of memorable sequences, from the horrifying to the comical. But whatever it was that made Watchmen a great comic book, you won’t find it here.

How to Interview a Rising Young Composer on Behalf of a Successful New Website for Which Your Friend Is an Intern

Interviewer: So, I don't really know what I'm doing. What's your name again? Why are you here?
Interviewee: Sorry, are you joking?
'er: Err, yes. Yes I am.
'ee: [laughs politely]
'er: So, you're [furtively examines surroundings] Chair Tableton, is that correct?
'ee: [hesitates] Yes. [laughs politely]
'er: And you're one of the composers of this new thing, right?
'ee: Right.
'er: How is it? The new thing? Or how was it? Is it done already? I don't know.
'ee: It's going fine. We just had a rehearsal [drones on about facts and ideas].
'er: Ok. [pauses] Well, what can I say?
'ee: Are you asking me?
'er: [laughs nervously] Yes.
'ee: Well, you could ask me about [makes suggestion of some kind].
'er: Sure. So how about that?
'ee: [answers own hypothetical question in detail]
'er: Ok. [pauses - looks at notebook] I have some notes here that I made that I'm now looking at. But they don't mean anything.
'ee: Right.
'er: I mean, literally. They're just little squiggles. Like something a child might draw. Take a look [proffers notebook for 'ee to examine]
'ee: Yes, you're right about that.
[general pause]
'er: Well, do you think that maybe, in the final analysis, what's really going on - what's the underlying chief factor in this equation - is that, in your experience, from your perspective - the experience-slash-perspective of a composer - you've maybe tried to engage in some way with the historical like, paradigm, in a way that is contemporary...that is contemporaneous with your own self being a composer right now and in the very recent past.
'ee: Is that...a question?
'er: No.
'ee: Then I can't answer.
'er: Ok.

Condemned 2

The original Condemned was one of those ambitious-but-flawed titles that pop up now and again to keep gaming interesting. Its chief innovation was a melee system that had the player ripping pipes, 2x4s and even guillotine blades (of the paper-cutting variety) from the environment in order to execute some of the most graphic beatdowns ever represented in pixels. Besides that, it boasted a profoundly unsettling atmosphere; a few hours of creeping around sewers and abandoned high schools (under constant threat of attack by gibbering maniacs) had me trash-talking the TV screen just to stay psyched. And that’s not even mentioning the groundbreaking forensic-investigation element (yes, yes…it was totally crap).

In Condemned 2 the player reprises the role of Ethan Thomas, whose experiences in the first instalment have led him to quit his job at the Serial Crimes Unit and turn to the bottle. In a big way. Cue a brutal tutorial in which he drinks heavily, has a schizophrenic episode or three and beats up a succession of homeless people/tar monsters. Thereafter, he’s recalled to service in order to help with a new murder investigation, initiating a story arc that takes in grisly serial killings, an Illuminati-style conspiracy and an army of aspiring pugilists, ready to pulp or be pulped in the name of entertainment.

It’s clear from the outset that the game is a massive improvement on its precursor. The graphics have been upgraded, naturally, but the combat’s also much more sophisticated: it now features arm independence (choose which fist to punch someone’s teeth out with!), combos and environment-specific fatalities. Everything feels more substantial, too, so demolishing a hoodlum’s face (while your in-game alter ego screams obscenities at him) takes on a rather unnerving quality, particularly when you follow up by crushing his head in a vice. But as long as you’re completely sick, you’ll have a ball – even the forensic bits are okay this time around.

So what’s not to like? For one thing, Condemned 2 is embarrassingly preoccupied with being gritty. Many of the characters, including Thomas himself, exude an air of playground toughness, as though they actually think that saying things like “let’s give this shit hole an enema” is cool. (This is a game in which one of the most sympathetic characters is a horrendously disfigured mass murderer.) There’s also a suspicion throughout that the plot only exists as a way of stringing together creepy environments: dilapidated hotels, snowed-in hunting lodges, abandoned high schools (again) etc. And if you found the sudden provision of magical powers at the end of Fahrenheit contrived, you’ll probably feel the same way when Thomas starts popping people’s heads with his voice.

None of this detracts from the action too much, though – at heart, the game is all about taking a holiday in horrific brutality. Or maybe it’s like a big budget porn movie: the sets are convincing, there’s a semi-coherent script and the performers are doing their best; but you’ll never mistake it for a real classic. It all comes down to how much you enjoy porn. In my case, that’s a lot.